Andrea Chalupa: Hi, It’S Andrea Chalupa of Gaslit Nation
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Gaslit Nation Transcript 20 May 2020 “BONUS: Tori Amos Reads ‘Resistance’” Andrea Chalupa: Hi, it’s Andrea Chalupa of Gaslit Nation. My co-host Sarah Kendzior and I read the new memoir by Tori Amos, “Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change and Courage”. We are both incredibly inspired by this book. “Resistance” has important insights on the creative process and why–as we’re always saying on Gaslit Nation–art matters, especially in times of crisis. Check out our interview with Tori, published on May 19. We’re thrilled to share an excerpt with our listeners from her chapter on the inspiration behind her classic song, “Cornflake Girl”, which concludes with Tori reading the lyrics. This excerpt of “Resistance” is provided to us courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio and read by Tori Amos. {transition music} Tori Amos: Chapter 8. A drum and bass groove greeted me and Karen Binns as we walked down the street in 1993, a book under my arm. She and I were in deep discussion about how women could be abusive to each other and the many different ways that can play out. I didn’t know it, but in that very moment a song was being born–a song that has sparked varied interpretations by its listeners in the past 27 years. Once a song leaves my lair, it will form relationships that I have no control over and really should not want to have control over. But the fact is, each song does have a genesis. Do I consciously know every aspect of the pollination process that creates a song? No. Sometimes, it’s a listener who points out what they have learned about a song. They may have had an experience that aligns with a song’s inner secrets, secrets that may be hiding in the shadows that will take me years to discover, or will take a listener years to share their interpretation with me. As I’ve said for over 30 years now, I am only a co-creator of the songs. This is a working collaboration that has been witnessed in action by a few of those I have made records with. The muses in the songs themselves offer melodies, chords, words and tones that allude to what the sound must be. Just because I don’t fully understand a tone does not mean I throw it away and impose my own. A tone may lead me to a discovery of a word or a phrase that reflects the tone originally sent by the muses. This is why I refer to songwriters as “sonic hunters”. Tracking down what a song wants to be requires being open to converging narratives. “Cornflake Girl” is the song that was forming herself as I walked down that street with Karen all those years ago. Karen had allowed me into her language world in 1991. We had been speaking in this language for a couple of years. Our way of communicating consisted of renaming a word with it’s reference. For example, we would refer to serial saboteurs as “Cornflake Girls”. Another important element of our conversation about why and how women betray each other was the groove underscoring our chat. The swing-feel blaring out of a shop that day is known as a shuffle groove. I found it really difficult not to sway back and forth to this rhythm. So, as I was physically swaying to this bass and drum track, Karen asked me about the book under my arm. It was “Possessing The Secret of Joy” by Alice Walker, and it opened up the conversation to a practice with which I had been unfamiliar. It is now widely known as FGM, or female genital mutilation. How women behave toward each other within the global culture of patriarchy is the discussion that the song “Cornflake Girl” wanted to take part in. 27 years from the inception of “Cornflake Girl”, listeners continue to share with me their insights about the song. Someone confided that her mother tried to justify her controlling behavior toward her daughter by saying, “I’m only doing this because I love you.” Over the years, hundreds of letters and conversations have taught me the severity of the words “I’m only doing this.” In one letter, “doing this” was threatening to cut off communication and support unless the daughter agreed to what the mother wanted her to do. In other laters, the context was a severed friendship, possibly poisoned by outside influences. One woman wrote to tell me that a woman she cared for dearly was becoming more and more isolated and controlled by someone else. In this instance, the letter writer was having a difficult time accepting that the isolated woman was defending the behavior of the manipulator. The details of each story have varied over the years, but the feeling of deep betrayal is consistent with most interpretations of “Cornflake Girl”. “Doing this” can take on sinister implications. “I’m only doing this to save you from yourself.” This story was told to me by someone who knew the two people involved and who asked “when are the words ‘tough love’ an excuse for abuse?”. At the center of the story was a mother and a daughter. The mother identified as a Christian. She believed that sex before marriage was a sin. The daughter’s religious beliefs were not specified. Her grades were very good and she was very involved in her high school. Apparently, she had gotten birth control believing it was the responsible thing to do. When her mother discovered the birth control hidden away somewhere, she tampered with it without the daughter knowing. The mother felt the daughter had to pay for her sin and wear her shame. The daughter became pregnant and was forced to give birth. The question is still valid. When is the justification of “tough love” actually just an excuse for abuse? A song can help open my eyes to the many emotions surrounding a complex issue. When I enter Cornflake Girl as an energy, she demands that we talk about what women perpetrate on each other, and what women withhold from each other. Cornflake Girl allows people into her frequency by being quite welcoming. I found her that way at first, anyway. The more I was bearing witness through all kinds of scenarios to women on women violence–and in the case of FGM we have to talk about women on girl violence–the more I would burst out and say “this is not really happening” and the answer I kept getting back was “you bet your life it is”. FGM–female genital mutilation–is described by the World Health Organization as “procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genital organs for non-medical reasons”. This is child abuse on a grand scale. Most girls affected by this harmful practice are cut between infancy and fifteen years of age. The numbers are overwhelming. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 200 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to FGM. More recent data suggests that 68 million girls will be cut between 2015 and 2030. It’s estimated that 3.9 million girls were cut in 2015 alone. This number will increase to around 4.6 million a year if this abuse is not addressed globally. The numbers continue to shock, revealing how many girls and women are at risk throughout the world, including in the United States and the United Kingdom. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 500,000 women and girls living in the United States are either at risk for or have undergone FGM. There are subjects songwriters take on because the subject haunts them. My view of this particular women’s issue was pried open by Alice Walker’s words. Years later, I am still learning about the complexity surrounding this harrowing practice. At first, I could not understand how someone could say they loved a young girl and then take her to a cutter who might use a razor blade, a scalpel, scissors, a knife, or a piece of glass to cut out a portion of or all of the girl’s genitals. As I’ve been exposed to this practice, and am still understanding more each day, it has become essential for me not to view it only as part of certain cultural communities. This is global gender inequality. If we do not get involved, the numbers of victims of FGM are set to rise. With that in mind, I began recently to research the origins of this violent practice, and how we as women became complicit in it. Women and men are carrying on the tradition and taking their daughters to have their genitals cut, and health care officials, teachers, judges and lawyers are also perpetuating this violence. Even if by turning and looking the other way, many people are culpable. We have to talk about this because it’s not going away and no one in the United States has been convicted of the practice. Those involved must be held accountable. Are US state lines being crossed to take girls to a medical care professional who is getting paid handsomely to violently abuse them? FGM pre-dates the rise of Christianity and Islam and has been practiced all over the world, so it is not the provence of a single religion. As the United Nations Population Fund states on its website, unfpa.org, “In Western Europe and the United States, clitorodectomy was described to be practiced so as to treat perceived ailments like hysteria, epilepsy, mental disorders, masturbation, nymphomania, and melancholia in the 1950’s”.